A few stories to remember

By DEBORA S. GORDON

Published 12:00 am, Saturday, March 5, 2011

Zakhor -- Remember! -- is a central Jewish value. Over the centuries it has become crucial to Jewish continuity: Remember who you are. Remember where you came from. Remember what they did to us. Remember your values and responsibilities. This remembering shapes our future.

At this time of year, Jews worldwide are embarking on three back-to-back observances centered around the command Zakhor. Purim, beginning the night of March 19, celebrates the deliverance of the Jews of Persia more than 2,000 years ago from a genocidal madman named Haman. We tell the story in the synagogue with costumes, noisemakers and silliness as we remember disaster averted.

Next month comes Pesach (Passover), celebrating the deliverance from slavery under Pharaoh some 3,000 years ago. Each Jew is commanded to retell the story to the next generation as if s/he had experienced the liberation personally. The seder is held at home, and one's family memories intermix with "remembering" the Exodus from Egypt.

A week later, on Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day), we commemorate the victims of another genocidal madman, one who murdered a third of the world's Jewish population from 1939-1945. Names are read, candles are lit, and memorial prayers are recited for those who have no family left to remember them.

Nowhere do the different aspects of Jewish remembering play out with as much emotional power as in regard to Israel. It's a tiny country -- from north to south, about the same distance as from Westchester to the Canadian border, and at its widest barely farther than from Albany to Oneonta. The founding of modern Israel came only three years after the end of World War II, so for many Jews, Israel is the answer to "Remember what they did to us." Their response to the Holocaust is "Never again," and they consider themselves justified in defending Israel in any way necessary.

Others of us take that biblical command to "Remember!" to mean "Remember your responsibility to do justice and be compassionate," as in these two passages:

"You shall not oppress an outsider; for you know the heart of an outsider, for you were outsiders in the land of Egypt."

"Do not oppress a hired servant ... Do not pervert the justice due to an outsider or to the fatherless, nor take a widow's cloak as security. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and your Eternal God redeemed you from there."

At Purim and Passover and Holocaust Memorial Day, we retell our stories not only to rehearse our collective memory, but also to point the way to whom we hope to become. We struggle between pride in our accomplishments, commitment to our values, and fear of what may happen to us.

When Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs tell their respective stories about each other and about the past hundred years, they are caught in this struggle as well. Their very different stories create conflicting collective memories, which in turn lie at the heart of the conflict in that tiny land.

The trip I took to Israel and the West Bank last October, with Rabbis for Human Rights -- North America, was material for a hundred stories. Israelis and Palestinians often do not know the stories of "outsiders" who live only a few miles away, but I heard both: Joyous stories of Arab families returning to rebuild their homes after 10 years, and heartbreaking stories of Arab children who have never been permitted out the front door of their family's home in Hebron and can only exit from the back. I visited an Israeli cousin whose son was traumatized by a shooting he'd witnessed as a child, met a Jew helping to help plant olive trees in a Palestinian village near his home, and listened to Israelis and Palestinians who had come to care about each other across chasms of shared grief.

In the coming week, I will be telling a few stories from Israel and the West Bank. Listening to my stories does not require agreement, nor does bringing open ears and a willing heart negate the listener's own story. It only allows each of us to begin to hear the story told by the outsider. We cannot escape from Zakhor, from remembering, but we need to remember more stories than just one.

Debora S. Gordon is rabbi of Congregation Berith Sholom in Troy. She will discuss her trip to Israel and the West Bank at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Golub Center of the Jewish Federation,184 Washington Ave. Extension. The program is sponsored by J Street Albany/Capital District.